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Sunday, June 25, 2006

Moral pontificating

Hello, readers!

I'm not Chief. As you may have noticed. Some of you will probably recognize me as "jenny" from the comments, and for those who don't, well, that's me. Chief has asked me to help out with the unenviable task of running CHB's crap through a strainer, and I'm grateful for the invitation. So, with that out of the way, let's get to today's Sunday surprise.

Shocking, right? I have no problem with this message. Wife-beating is unacceptable. We all know that.

But coming from Dan Shaughnessy? Let's get something straight here: I am NOT comparing the crime of writing insulting garbage in a newspaper to the crime of domestic abuse. There's no comparison. But please. With all the horrible things this man has written about people over the years that HE should be called out publicly way more than he is, this is a little ironic.

And so he was out there throwing cut fastballs and changeups on a misty, humid afternoon. Nice message for all the young folks watching at home and in the stands.

You know what the nice message was? The nice message was that the guy got the shit booed out of him every time he stepped out of the dugout. It was abundantly clear that NOBODY approved of what he'd done. As far as those "young folks," let's take a look around the league, Dan. Brett Myers is neither the first nor the last player to beat his wife, as you noted later on with your mention of Wil "Telephone Bludgeon" Cordero. The league is full of drug abusers (and yes, you can take that any way you please), drunk drivers, and other such lovely role models. Sidney Ponson and Jason Michaels are in trouble for assaulting police officers. Point is, Dan, most of these guys are not really people you want your kids emulating. Let's not act like Brett Myers is the sole scum of the earth.

It's just plain wrong. It's an embarrassment to baseball and an embarrassment to the Phillies. At the very least, Myers would have been better off if he'd been sent home to start counseling with his wife. Or maybe someone in authority could have condemned domestic violence -- in the generic sense. Instead all we got was ``the game must go on" -- 36 hours after a man was arrested for beating his wife.

Yes, it is an embarrassment. It's always an embarrassment. Does Dan think for some reason that if he draws attention to this issue, which has already been written about twice in the Globe by other people, it will become more of an embarrassment? Everybody already condemns domestic violence. We don't need Dan Shaughnessy, of all people, to tell us it's wrong, especially when this issue has already been beaten (no pun intended) to death by various other writers. It's quite obvious what everyone thinks of Myers, Dan, since you aptly pointed out the resounding chorus of boos he received from the Fenway crowd. What exactly is the point of this column?

Oh, and I don't think he can go home and start counseling right away. He's not allowed to go near her.

Jenny,Thank you for reading what I could not stand/bother to read after this line:

What a league. What a country.

Yes Dan, what a country indeed. A country that holds fast to the belief that a man is innocent until proven guilty, that each person is entitled to a fair trial. What a country. I can hear Yakov Smirnoff complaining now.

Dan doesn't seem to understand that these rights are absolute. The Founding Fathers recognized through experience that police powers could be abusive and enshrined these protections in the Bill of Rights. There have been other eras in American history that have shown the same potential for police abuse.

Because of the potential for abuse in any matter, these rights have to be absolute. The presumption of innocence cannot change with the type of offense, the celebrity of the alleged criminal, or the amount of public evidence.

While this protection applies only to the government, I do not think it is good policy for employers to assume the role of judge and jury. There are defenses to a charge of assault, and until the case reaches its conclusion, we will not know the full facts. If Myers were to be punished by MLB or the Phillies and found to be innocent, he cannot recover from the damage done to him from the premature punishment.

It should be noted that my belief that Myers should not be punished by MLB or the Phillies at this time is completely separate from my conclusion regarding what occurred between him and his wife. I can make my own determination, but I cannot support government or employers meting out justice before a fair trial. What happened on Saturday was the correct thing: Myers was able to perform his job and the fans reacted according to what they knew.

I should add that while The CHB raises the Red Sox' suspension of Wil Cordero in 1997 for similar transgressions, he negelcts to report that the Red Sox traded for Cordero knowing that he had a history of domestic violence while with the Expos.

When do we forgive? Should the drunk not be allowed back to work until he completes Betty Ford?

Jenny, congratulations on your successful stint as Special Guest Blogger. Vader, you hit the nail on the head too. And to the CHB apologist: if Dan wants to reach out to the city and region readers, he should do the sports readers a favor and pull a Fitzgerald.

Let's see...he writes pointless and nasty columns; he's a frequent jerk and an occasional racist; he misinforms the public; he takes up space that could be used by other, better writers; he breathes my air...

Pretty describes this absolute drivel. Now if I read the past few days correctly, the blogger sends out an appeal for "Jenny" to send him an e-mail. She does. He then has her write a day's entry, or in her words "running CHB's crap through a strainer" which, in this context, clearly means "taking the columnist's work and view it negatively before setting eyes on the actual words, then write a few hundred words based on a preconceived notion."

The result is astoundingly inarticulate babbling, the point apparently being "yes he's right, but I don't want to hear it from him"

And then we have the blogger, joined by the pathetic dbvader whose knee-jerk reaction is apparently that a person's presumption of innocence that stands between an accusation and a sanction that can include loss of propert or loss of liberty means a private employer should not take administrative action against the very public boorish behavior of one of its employees. By that reasoning, no baseball player should ever be suspended for drug use until convicted in a court of law, no politician ought to be removed from office for bribe-taking until conviction by a jury of his peers, no priest accused of fondling little boys ought to be removed from his duties until a jury pronounces him guilty and no drunk driver should have his license pulled until the gavel falls concluding a trial in which he is convicted.

This is the sort of utter nonsense that results when people leave all sensibilities behind to engage in a campaign marked more by hatred and jealousy than by intelligent discussion. Mostly, of late, I have ignored the nonsense, but today's entry is odious beyond even the tawdry standards that characterize this spectacularly tendentious blog.

This just in: Brett Myers has taken a leave of absence. He should have done it before pitching again but this was the right call. The Phillies didnt want to pick a fight with the union by suspending him, so they talked him into suspending himself. Proof positive that the CHBs and objectivebruces of the world are the knee-jerkers.